A station (node or computer) in a computer network sending information to all the other stations in the network is termed as broadcasting. A completely connected network, is a network where each node is connected to every other node. By a completely connected network, it is meant that there is always a direct network connection between any two given stations in the network.
The applications of broadcasting are well known in the literature of computer networks. Some of them are mentioned here with a special emphasis based on the possibility of these applications requiring broadcasting over completely connected networks.                Mission critical high-speed real-time networks almost always tend to have the completely connected characteristic due to the inherent advantage the setup provides in terms of speed.        Distributed databases require performing the operation of synchronizing data frequently. For performance reasons, these distributed databases will generally be completely connected. Whenever one or more rows of data is updated in one of the database servers in the network, the remaining servers need to be brought in sync with the source server.        In general, other applications like exchange of routing information between the routers of a Wide Area Network or communication between the admin stations of a large network (which will be completely connected, if not the whole network) will require broadcasting over completely connected networks.        
Several more applications in a variety of fields like Simulation, Control Systems etc. require the broadcast of information over completely connected networks.
Standard Techniques proposed for broadcast routing include direct routing, flooding, minimum spanning tree routing, multi-destination routing and reverse path forwarding. However, all these algorithms are designed for a general network. The advantages of the above algorithms fail to be realized when the network is fully connected.                Direct Routing: Source S transmits all the packets to all the remaining stations in the network. S sends the first of “p” packets on all the (n−1) lines connecting to the remaining n−1 stations in the first unit of time, the second packet in the second unit of time and so on. This process continues for p units of time, by then all the stations would have received all the broadcast packets.        Flooding: Source S sends packets to all its connected neighbours and then each station that receives a packet sends it out again on the lines other than the line from where it came in. This technique is suitable for general networks. It is unnecessary and unsuitable for completely connected networks for the simple reason that after the first transmission, all the stations would have that packet and hence there will be no need to flood further. Thus this method is not applicable for the cases of completely connected networks.        Minimum Spanning Tree Routing: A minimum spanning tree rooted at the source S is formed for the entire network and then the packets are sent by each receiver to all of its children. The packets are received from the single parent of the station with respect to the minimum spanning tree constructed. However, for the completely connected networks, this method reduces to the direct routing method.        Both Multi-destination Routing and Reverse Path Forwarding: are methods that are suitable for networks that are not fully connected, and when the hop count for the packets is more than one. However, in fully connected networks the hop count for a packet from source to destination is one hence these methods are reduced to the direct routing method.        
The above methods (other than the direct routing method) proposed are only useful for general cases of networks. All of these methods reduce to direct routing for completely connected networks.
Furthermore these methods do not utilize the special properties of fully connected networks to achieve efficiency.
For a fully connected network having five nodes, in the direct routing method only 4 out of 10 lines are used for this broadcast. For the duration of the transmission, these four lines are completely loaded while the remaining 6 lines remain unutilized (assuming that no other transmission is taking place). Thus we have a network that is loaded for a long time in only 40% of the area while the remaining 60% is idle. This ratio becomes worse as the size of the network increases.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,085 describes a Flood-and-Forward broadcasting technique that aims to minimize transmission delay. However, while this technique is effective for partially connected networks it is not optimal for fully connected networks, as it does not exploit the specific facilities that are unique to such a network.